Showing its back,
then showing its front —
the maple leaf falls.
— Ryōkan · AI translation
The original
ura wo mise / omote wo misete / chiru momiji
That is the source, in romaji. It is printed here rather than kept in a footnote because the English above is machine-made, not a scholar’s, and you should be able to check it against something rather than take it on trust.
The rendering follows the sense rather than forcing 5-7-5. Japanese counts on rather than syllables, and the two do not line up; padding a translation out to fit the English shape is how you end up with a poem the poet did not write.
Ryōkan 1758–1831
A Zen monk who lived most of his life as a hermit, declining positions and possessions. His poems and his calligraphy are both prized for a plainness that took a great deal of discipline to arrive at.
Why this is here at all
HaikuMail is a Chrome extension that hides your inbox behind a search-only reader, and holds the first thirty seconds with a poem. This is one of the 157 it draws from. That is the rest of the story.